Hellmann's Mayotivations Brings Will Levis to Football Season
Hellmann's Mayotivations is a 2024 integrated advertising campaign created by VML New York that partners the mayonnaise brand with Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis across national television, digital, radio, out-of-home, and stadium placements in the United States, running from early September through mid-December to reclaim relevance during the fall football season.
Hellmann's launched Mayotivations in September 2024 as a direct response to a recognised pattern of seasonal sales softness during autumn. The campaign's central creative conceit transforms Will Levis — a quarterback already associated with an enthusiastic, widely circulated affection for mayonnaise — into a motivational spokesperson whose love of the condiment doubles as a metaphor for personal drive and game-day energy. A series of 15-second spots anchors the television buy, supported by longer-form material that deepens the character portrait of Levis as a genuine enthusiast rather than a transactional brand ambassador.
In the United States, the campaign deployed across a notably wide media mix: national TV carried the core creative, while in-game radio placements reached audiences at the moment of highest sports engagement. Digital display and out-of-home extended the campaign's physical presence, and shoppable QR codes embedded in stadium placements created a direct commerce bridge from awareness to purchase. Chris Symmes, Head of Marketing for Dressings at Unilever, articulated the brand's intent precisely, stating, as reported by Little Black Book Online, that "whatever your motivation is, Hellmann's is covering the spread for football's dedicated fans and helping to mayotivate them this season." The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100.
Hellmann's identified a concrete commercial problem before developing the Mayotivations creative strategy. The brand recognised that the fall football season — despite representing one of the highest-traffic periods for food consumption in the United States — historically coincides with a dip in mayonnaise sales, as reported by reel360.com. Rather than accepting that seasonal pattern, Hellmann's and VML built a campaign architecture designed to insert the brand into the cultural conversation already dominating American households each autumn weekend.
The strategic insight is precise: the majority of game-day gatherings in the United States are organised as much around food as around the sport itself. Chris Symmes of Unilever stated, as quoted by Little Black Book Online, that "we know that some people show up to the tailgate for football, and others show up for the food spread." That duality — sport and sustenance coexisting as equal motivators — gave the campaign its name and its emotional logic. By framing Hellmann's as a catalyst for motivation rather than simply a cooking ingredient, VML shifted the brand's role from passive pantry staple to active participant in consumer aspiration.
The competitive landscape in the United States condiment category is well-defined. Kraft Heinz operates as Hellmann's most significant competitor in the mayonnaise segment, and the race for cultural relevance sits alongside the fight for shelf presence. According to proficientmarketinsights.com, Hellmann's parent Unilever holds an estimated global mayonnaise market share of approximately 22 percent. Targeting the 18-to-34 demographic — a group that, according to trendhunter.com, responds strongly to authentic brand storytelling with a sports or lifestyle dimension — gave the campaign a clear audience whose purchasing behaviour is still being shaped.
Dan Opsal directed the Mayotivations television spots. Opsal is an Emmy-nominated sketch writer and director whose credits include work on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as reported by lbbonline.com, and his background in comedic short-form storytelling is legible in every frame of the campaign's execution. The 15-second spots are built for velocity — each one lands a single absurdist premise around Will Levis's genuine enthusiasm for mayonnaise and exits before the joke can soften, a structural choice that suits both the brevity of in-game advertising windows and the scroll speed of digital placements.
VML New York served as the agency of record for the campaign. The creative team leaned into what made Will Levis an unusual choice for a food brand: his publicly documented fondness for eating mayonnaise — including consuming it directly — had already generated organic social attention, meaning the campaign did not need to construct a fictional character around him. Instead, the creative work amplified a pre-existing personality trait, lending the spots an authenticity that more conventional athlete endorsements struggle to achieve. Hellmann's had previously worked with high-profile talent including Jon Hamm, Brie Larson, Kate McKinnon, and Pete Davidson across successive Super Bowl campaigns, as documented by reel360.com, establishing a production standard the Mayotivations team was expected to meet across a very different media format.
The longer-form material accompanying the 15-second spots gives Levis space to operate with more comedic range, while the shoppable QR code integration in stadium placements represents a production and media planning decision as much as a creative one — connecting the emotional resonance of live sport to an immediate retail moment in the United States market.
No verified performance data for the Mayotivations campaign is publicly available in the form of disclosed sales lift, market-share movement, brand-tracking results, conversion rates, or ROI figures. No award recognition for Mayotivations has been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC as of the time of publication.
Structurally, the campaign assembles several elements that advertising effectiveness research consistently associates with strong performance. The use of a talent whose food preference was already a matter of public record removes a layer of disbelief that undermines many celebrity endorsements. The multi-channel media plan — spanning national TV, in-game radio, digital, out-of-home, and shoppable stadium placements across the United States — creates both broad reach and contextual precision, reaching consumers in the moments most adjacent to food purchasing decisions. The 15-second format is efficient for frequency-building within a defined seasonal window, while longer-form content supports deeper brand association for audiences who seek it. The longer-form asset on the campaign's primary video platform accumulated 35,095 views and 277 likes, figures that indicate modest organic traction relative to the scale of a nationally distributed campaign. According to proficientmarketinsights.com, the North American mayonnaise market accounts for approximately 41 to 45 percent of global category volume, contextualising the commercial stakes of defending seasonal relevance in the United States during football season.
Hellmann's Mayotivations is a 2024 US advertising campaign created by VML New York. It partners Hellmann's with Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis across national TV, digital, radio, out-of-home, and stadium placements to combat seasonal sales softness during the American fall football season, running from September through mid-December 2024.
Will Levis is the starting quarterback for the Tennessee Titans. Hellmann's selected him because his publicly documented enthusiasm for eating mayonnaise had already generated organic cultural attention, allowing VML to amplify an authentic personality trait rather than construct a fictional brand persona, as reported by lbbonline.com.
Dan Opsal directed the Mayotivations TV spots. Opsal is an Emmy-nominated sketch writer and director known for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as reported by lbbonline.com. His comedic short-form background shaped the campaign's rapid-fire 15-second format, which was designed to land a single absurdist premise efficiently within in-game advertising windows.
Mayotivations ran across national television, in-game radio, digital display, out-of-home placements, and stadium activations in the United States. Stadium placements included shoppable QR codes linking live sports audiences directly to purchase, creating a commerce bridge from brand awareness to retail action during the football season, as reported by lbbonline.com.
No award recognition for Hellmann's Mayotivations has been identified across Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC as of publication. VML's 2024 recognition page credits other Hellmann's work, including Mayo Cat, but does not list Mayotivations among its awarded campaigns.
Hellmann's designed Mayotivations to address a recognised seasonal sales dip during the US fall football season, as reported by reel360.com. The campaign repositioned the brand from a passive pantry ingredient to an active motivational presence in game-day culture, targeting the 18-to-34 demographic that responds to authentic sports-adjacent storytelling, according to trendhunter.com.
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